Remember, for one of the shortest jumps in the original (Dome of the Rock), we calculated Altair would need a pile three times as high and 41 times as large to stop the fall without Altair crashing through the cart and into the bricks below. So, “slightly larger” won’t cut it, unless for some reason Ezio is “vastly lighter”.

Owens’ built his “Avatar Machine” costume to “[replicate] the aesthetics and visuals of third person gaming, allowing the user to view themselves as a virtual character in real space via a head mounted interface.”

Which means… yeah, you guessed it. “The system potentially allows for a diminished sense of social responsibility, and could lead the user to demonstrate behaviours normally reserved for the gaming environment.”

That’s all well and good, but we just want to know one thing: Can you make us one, Marc?

Avatar Machine [Marc Owens, via GameSetWatch]

The different types of tournament are micro-management, small-scale combat, limited tech tree and full games using StarCraft Brood War 1.16.1. Registration is open between now and September 15, 2010. Submission is open from September 15 through to September 30, and the actual tournament kicks off October 1 and continues through the AIIDE 2010 Conference.

Here’s what the official website has to say:

Bots for StarCraft can be developed using the Broodwar API, which provides hooks into StarCraft and enables the development of custom AI for StarCraft. A C++ interface enables developers to query the current state of the game and issue orders to units.

…

All of the tournaments will use a double-elimination bracket, based on best of 5 matches.

So go forth, StarCraft modders. It’s not just for nerd cred… it’s for science!

Thanks for the tip, Professor Lowood!
Image Cred

The group has released a report on the super-popular home fitness program, drawing on research performed by the University of Wisconsin. And this report has found that even Wii Fit’s most physically taxing workouts can’t hold a candle to actual exercise.

Wii Fit’s boxing, for example, burns only one-third of the calories of actual boxing, while the other four most intensive modes — Free Island Run, Super Hula Hoop, Advanced Step and Free Step — only burned between 100 and 160 calories for every 30 minutes of exercise. Considering a cheeseburger has around 300 calories, you’ll be on Wii Fit all day if you want to really burn some fat.

Perhaps most damning/hilarious, however, is the report’s finding that while Wii Fit burns more calories than a regular game — where you’re doing nothing — it’s not as good for you as a session on Nintendo’s own Wii Sports.

Ah, the power of marketing.

American Council on Exercise Charts ‘Underwhelming’ Wii Fit Health Benefits [Gamasutra]

Welcome to Bobby Kotick’s nightmare, a world in which Guitar Hero controllers could be rendered useless, a world in which video games can be played by monitoring muscle actions. A brave new air guitar future!

In reality, this technical demonstration of muscle-computer interfaces, as shown at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, looks far less precise, far more finger straining than playing with traditional plastic. But the work done here by Scott Saponas, a PhD student at the University of Washington, and his peers could provide some of the tactile feedback missing from other motion control options, like Microsoft’s Project Natal.

The non-gaming applications are just as fascinating, especially the theoretical car door opening baby carriage. Much better than the personal jet packs and silver jumpsuits I had planned for my own futuristic lifestyle.

Guitar Hero without a guitar [Procrastineering]

Deniz Ince, 11, is the lead author on the study, to be presented Monday in Philadelphia at the annual meeting of the American College of Rheumatology. Ince, who enjoys playing the Wii, found his fingers ached when he squeezed oranges. He set about researching the matter to determine if video games were linked to it.

The study surveyed 171 of Ince’s schoolmates, aged 7 to 12 years old. Eighty percent said they played consoles or handhelds, and half of those said they played less than an hour a day. A third said they played one to two hours daily, and 7 and 6 percent said they played 2 to 3 or 3 or more hours a day, respectively.

The study found that each additional hour of use increased the likelihood of experiencing pain by 50 percent. It also found a higher pain incidence in younger children than older.

The study’s senior author, Dr. Yasuf Yazici of New York University, said “the younger the kids, the more significant the pain.” Why exactly couldn’t be proven by the research, although the researchers believe it might be because muscles and tendons in younger kids are still developing.

The survey respondents said the pain they felt was “generally mild,” although some 22 percent found it enough to limit how much they played. Interestingly, playing a Wii exclusively resulted in more self-reported pain, regardless of the player’s age or how much he or she played per day.

Video Games Can Play Havoc With Kids’ Joints [HealthDay on U.S. News & World Report]

CNN walks us through a number of experimental programs being tested by Homeland Security’s Future Attribute Screening Technology, or FAST.

The different systems check a person’s heart rate, breathing, eye movement, body temperature and, yes, fidgeting.

There are a number of different devices and technology involved in all of this detection, from thermal imaging to cameras used for eye tracking. But the most interesting to many of you will likely be the improvised fidgeting monitor.

Researchers took a Wii balance board — a device people stand on to interact with certain Nintendo Wii video games — and altered it to show how someone’s weight shifts. Studies are now under way to determine whether there is a level of fidgeting that would suggest the need for secondary screening.

Fortunately, the screening wouldn’t rely strictly on a person’s Wii Fit Age to determine if they’re a terrorist or not. Instead, screeners would look at all of the body signs before unjustly labelling a nervous flier a possible suicide bomber.

Will airports screen for body signals? Researchers hope so [CNN, thanks mjarantilla]

The study’s results imply that video games draw on physiological mechanisms in ways similar to warfare, where testosterone-fuelled aggression provides a strong advantage. Researchers had tried studying it on subjects in sports, but the natural production of testosterone by physical exertion clouded the results of the study.

In this one, researchers pitted 14 three-player teams against one another in Unreal Tournament 2004’s Onslaught—a capture-the-flag mode—and laid a $US45 bounty for winning team players vs. $US15 for losers. To make sure they knew what they were doing, they let the teams practice for a week.

Afterward, they found that winning teams’ testosterone levels spiked immediately after the tournament, especially in those who contributed most to the win. When team members played one another, in death matches with similar cash incentives, the best performing males typically produced less testosterone than those they defeated.

“In a serious out-group competition you can kill all your rivals and you’re better for it,” said David Geary, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Missouri. But when competing against others in order establish a social hierarchy, annihilation doesn’t make sense. “You can’t alienate your in-group partners, because you need them,” he said.

Gamers Are More Aggressive to Strangers [New Scientist]

What’s controller latency? DF explain it neatly as:

In basic terms, controller latency is very easy to define. It’s the time, usually measured in frames or milliseconds, between pressing the button on your controller and the appropriate action kicking in on-screen during gameplay. The longer the delay, the less responsive the controls, and the more unsatisfying the game can feel.

This can be caused in two ways. One by LCD televisions, the other by inherent lag in the game’s code. Since TV latency can vary between sets, DF’s research focuses solely on measuring the lag between the controller and the game code. Their findings are listed below.

As you can see, the top performers are the ones that really need as little lag as possible: the twitchy games, the ones most reliant on fast timing. So fighting games, music games, driving games. What’s most interesting is the relatively poor performance of some of the shooters on the list, particularly Halo 3.

For the full rundown of the methodology and technology involved, hit the link below.

Console Gaming: The Lag Factor [Eurogamer]

Or at least the brains of adolescent girls, who were the subject of the study, funded by Tetris marketer Blue Planet Software. Adolescent girls’ brains are still developing, as any adolescent boy can tell you, so their brains are more susceptible to the sort of change Haier was looking for, and change he indeed found. The girls were given MRI scans before and after three months of Tetris, and after the testing period it was found that certain areas (in blue above) showed greater efficiency, while others (in red) showed thicker cortexes, indicating more brain matter.

Future benefits of this study, says co-investigator Dr. Richard Haier, might be to “demonstrate that a player of Tetris does see lasting effects that generalize to other activity,” showing for example that engaging in activities like playing some games might help fight off the mental decline that occurs with aging.

The full study is being published in Thursday’s BMC Research Notes, but we get the general gist. Adolescent girls who play Tetris on a regular basis grow up to be completely awesome.

How Tetris Changes Your Brain [Wired]